Trina Baughn
On Sept. 9, your Oak Ridge City Council will likely vote to approve additional water and sewer rate increases. When combined with the last two increases, the average user’s bill will have spiked 62 percent in just 34 months. Subsequently, should council adopt the fully proposed schedule through 2019, most residents and businesses will be paying double what they were paying prior to the initial increase imposed in May 2012.
These increases are to pay for the $33 million of debt that the city incurred in the last two years in addition to a projected $15 million more that Public Works says is still needed. We are continuing to borrow without limits and without regard for your ability to pay such astronomical bills.
Much of this debt could have been reduced or avoided all together had your city government taken the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency up on the many opportunities they gave us to make corrections. (See my Feb. 24 post at trinabaughn.com entitled, “The Rest of the EPA Mandate Story.â€) Unfortunately, we’ve screwed up so many times that we were too fearful to pursue leniencies that are now being afforded to many cities across the nation. So, while others have 20-25 years to comply and can spread out costs to minimize the hit their ratepayers will take, Oak Ridge has just five years and is forcing the entire burden on its residents and businesses.
I am fully aware from talking with so many of you that you cannot afford to continue writing blank checks for your city’s mistakes. I know that many residents and businesses have been contemplating leaving Oak Ridge all together. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts to communicate your hardships to my fellow council members, my pleas continue to fall on deaf ears.
Therefore, I am appealing to the public to join me in an effort to encourage the rest of council to seek out alternative ways to pay for these expenses. Once again, I offer my own suggestions, which include both new and old ideas.
Even though council recently approved the city annual budget, there is nothing preventing us from directing the city manager to reallocate funds. In fact, since we approved the budget in May, we have already realized some areas of surplus.
For example, during our recent discussions on waived competitive bids, we learned that Public Works had duplicated expenditures when they budgeted for eight additional employees in both their personnel and temporary staffing line items. They also explained that they regularly overbudget for certain items, like water treatment chemicals, by as much as $200,000. While being conservative is practical, it is a luxury we cannot afford during such tough times.
Cities in similar predicaments, like Richmond, Va., and Lafayette, Ind., have imposed drainage fees on all tax-exempt organizations to help pay for the EPA crackdown on storm water runoff. Their logic is that rain doesn’t discriminate between exempt and non-exempt properties, so why should the city?
Another untapped revenue source may be found in advertising. I’m not suggesting that we sell space on the sides of our buildings, but there are some less intrusive avenues worth exploring. It’s not uncommon to see local businesses advertise at sports fields. Less common, but not unheard of, is selling space on city vehicles. We could also consider integrating an online business directory into our website and charge a nominal, annual fee per business.
Though council previously rejected all of the following suggestions, perhaps time has allowed for a renewed perspective that could allow us to focus more on workarounds and less on hindrances.
Council has the option to reallocate the $100,000 budgeted for the Land Bank and instead require the program to be entirely funded by grants and donations. Since we already have possession of the starter homes for that program and since the board of directors would be comprised entirely of volunteers, we have no immediate need for the cash.
Council could also commission a team of representatives from the city and both counties along with the property assessors to research and negotiate voluntary payment-in-lieu-of-taxes, or PILT, agreements with exempt organizations who are most able to afford paying for city services that are currently paid for by the taxpayer.
We could advertise the golf course as “For Sale: Half Price.†Though it has been 15 years since we built it, we still owe about half of what we borrowed. Let’s just cut our losses while we can and immediately apply the $500,000 per year that we would otherwise continue paying through 2021 toward some of this water/sewer debt.
We could renegotiate the lease with the Oak Ridge Chamber of Commerce to a rate that aligns with true market value. As it currently stands, we are locked into a 25-year lease that collects roughly $600 per year. If Mr. Hardy is not willing to renegotiate their lease, then the city could put the land up for sale. If it doesn’t sell, then let’s put the land up for auction. Even if the winning bid is $1, we will have created a new source of sustainable revenue by converting it into taxable property.
Council could direct the city manager to impose a hiring freeze to allow for the reduction of non-critical positions through attrition. The city has an annual turnover rate of 5 percent. If we reduced full-time equivalents, or FTEs, by 2.5 percent, the potential annual savings could be as much as $632,500.
These are all merely suggestions. I’m sure that if we all put our heads together and committed to finding alternatives that we can change our current course. Normally, I would encourage any and all of you to contact me with your thoughts. But, at this juncture, that is not how we will make change. If you want to influence council on these most critical decisions, decisions that will hit your family directly where it hurts the most, then you must engage your other council members as you have me. Sending a single e-mail will not be enough. Speaking at the lectern will not be enough. You must email ALL of council ([email protected]), ALL of the local press, and you ALL must come to our meetings.
The final vote on these increases will be in October. After that, the only recourse you will have left comes in November 2014, when four of the seven council seats will be up for election. Unfortunately, most of the damage will have already been done by then.
Trina Baughn is an Oak Ridge City Council member.
Susie Williams Taylor (Olivia) says
Wonderful suggestions Trina! Thank you for all your efforts for my hometown.
Marsha Luthenauer says
I like the idea that someone (anyone) on city council is thinking outside the box. Hopefully we will survive the ineffectiveness that has sat on city council for too long.
Mark Caldwell says
After tallying the “savings” Ms. Baughn is proposing, her total amount comes nowhere near the amount needed.
And Ms. Baughn saying “…Oak Ridge has just five years and is forcing the entire burden on its residents and businesses.” is simply not true. DOE is providing a large amount of money to upgrade our sewerage system, and city officials were able to receive a very low interest loan from the state which will also reduce the amount the citizens and businesses will pay.
Exactly who should pay for safe water? The users.
Charlie Jernigan says
You can take $100,000 off that total since the money allocated to the Land Bank is a grant specific to housing and not applicable for the long standing sewer problem.
Andrew Howe says
When the “users” elect officials, who then appoint/hire officials, there is a certain amount of expectations the tax payers have of those officials. Specifically, in this situation the expectation is that they’ll keep their eyes on the ball, plan ahead, do all they can to avoid a huge burden on the people, and be financially responsible to the best of their abilities.
It’s debatable about whether our city has lived up to those expectations, which is why some may feel that the users really shouldn’t shoulder this burden.
The city may not be able to make all the cuts in spending needed to pay for this huge bill, but the point still stands that there ARE ways to reduce more of our spending, and to generate a bit more revenue fairly.
We don’t truly need to spend money on a lot of things the city spends money on. Many of these things are great, but they lose that “great” feeling when we’re stuck with higher bills. Many of the things our city spends money on were never part of the expenses of the town I grew up in. We never noticed there to be anything lacking.
Long and short, this water system train went off the rails somewhere along the line, by the people we’ve elected/appointed/hired to make sure that doesn’t occur. So you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone happy about the situation.
I’m certainly glad for all the city HAS done to help reduce the burden, as they have indeed done things. It just apparently hasn’t been quite enough, as these rate hikes are beyond the pale.
Sam Hopwood says
Excellent points, but I take it that you are a fairly new-comer to Oak Ridge. Many of the folks here think a little different than most cities, due to the Feds allowing us to feed at the government trough for so many years. We insist on the best of everything from schools to garbage pick-up and woe to anyone who might challange that. Borrowing money to pay for our indulgences is simply a way of life in OR and those who would try to suggest that we live within our means face an uphill battle. But all good things come to an end, at some point, and we are now at that point. As the old saying goes “our chickens have come home to roost.” Just my view.
I’ll duck and await the onslaught… 🙂
Dave Smith says
I think your questions and declarations are understandable as well as typical of many who haven’t heard the whole story–a story that began several decades ago.
Here is a concise overview of how we got to where we are today, excerpted from commentary by former councilwoman Ellen Smith.
See http://ellensmith.org/blog/2013/07/08/obstructionism-isnt-fiscal-responsibility/
“For about two decades, the city had an aggressive program to rehabilitate and maintain sewers. The city spent as much on sewer maintenance and rehabilitation as city leadership thought the ratepayers could afford—typically $1 to $1.5 million each year. Significant progress was made in eliminating infiltration and inflow. This was an expensive program and it greatly reduced the number of overflows, but the annual expenditures weren’t big enough to keep up with the problem. The city’s public works staff and consultants knew that the city wasn’t spending enough money to keep up with the deterioration of aging sewer systems.”
“Failure to authorize the required expenditures now won’t solve the problem. At best, it simply delays the needed work, but more likely it will end up costing the ratepayers more money, not less.”
Council members are like other politicians: they exist primarily in the present, or at least within the temporal realm of their term of office. It is very unpopular, if not impossible for them to ask the current citizenry to pay more today for the benefit of the future citizenry tomorrow. Without the regulative arm of the EPA we would continue overflowing sewage into the nearby streams and rivers as long as possible to maintain the lowest possible rates. If we had doubled our efforts 20 or 30 years ago, we wouldn’t be faced with the need for such large water and sewer rate increases today. I think it is time we stopped blaming the current budget and fully accepted the blame for our past neglect.